Citizens! See to it That the Whole People Clearly Understands What the Chief Parties Are that Are Fighting in the Elections in St. Petersburg and What Each of Them Strives For!

Published:
Published November 23, 1906 in leaflet form as a supplement to Proletary, No. 8.
Published according to the leaflet text.
Source:Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1965,
Moscow,
Volume 11,
pages 326-331.
Translated:Transcription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
(2004).
You may freely copy, distribute,
display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
Archive” as your source.
• README

What Are the Three Chief Parties?

The Black Hundreds

The Cadets

The Social-Democrats

They are—the Union of the Russian People, the monarchists, the
Party of Law and Order, the Union of October Seventeenth,the
Commercial and Industrial Party, the Party of Peaceful Renovation.

They are—the party of “people’s” freedom or
Constitutional-“Democratic” (in reality
liberal-monarchist) Party, the Party of “Democratic”
Reforms, the radicals, etc.

The Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party. It is the party
of the class-conscious-workers of all the nationalities of Russia,
of Russians, Letts, Poles, Jews, Ukrainians, Armenians, Georgians,
Tatars, etc.

Whose Interests Do the Three Chief Parties Defend?

The Black Hundreds defend the present tsarist government,
they stand for the landlords, for the government
officials, for the
power of the police, for military courts, for pogroms.

The Cadets defend the interests of the liberal bourgeois, the
liberal landlords, merchants and capitalists. The Cadets are a
party of bourgeois lawyers, journalists, professors and such like.

The Social-Democrats are the party of the working class,
defending the interests of all the working and exploited people.

What Do the Three Chief Parties Strive For?

The Black Hundreds strive for the preservation of the old
autocracy, the lack of rights of the people, the unlimited rule
over it of the landlords, officials and police.

The Cadets strive for the transfer of power into the hands
of the liberal bourgeoisie. The monarchy; by preserving the police
and military regime, is to safeguard the capitalists’ right to rob
the workers and peasants.

The Social-Democrats strive for the transfer of all power
into the hands of the people, i.e., a democratic republic. The
Social-Democrats need complete freedom in order to fight for
socialism, for the emancipation of labour from the yoke of capital.

What Kind of Freedom do the Three Chief Parties Want
to Give the People?

The Black Hundreds do not give the people any freedom, any
power. All power is for the tsarist government. The rights of the
people are: to pay taxes, to toil for the rich, to rot in gaol.

The Cadets want the kind of “people’s freedom” which
will be subordinated, firstly, to the Upper Chamber, i.e., to the
landlords and capitalists; secondly, to the monarchy, i. e., the
tsar with the irresponsible police and armed forces. One-third of
t.he power to the people, one-third to the capitalists and one-third
to the tsar.

The Social-Democrats want complete freedom and all power
for the people, all officials to be elected, the soldiers to be
freed from barrack servitude, and the organisation of a free,
people’s militia.

How Do the Three Chief Parties Regard the Peasants’
Demand for Land?

The Black Hundreds defend the interests of the feudal landlords. No
land for the peasants. Only the rich to be allowed to buy land from
the landlords by voluntary agreement.

The Cadets want to preserve the landlord system of agriculture by
means of concessions. They propose redemption payments by the
peasants which already once before in 1861 ruined the peasants. The
Cadets do not agree that the land question should be settled by
local committees elected by universal, direct and equal suffrage by
secret ballot.

The Social-Democrats want to abolish our landlord system of
agriculture. All land must be transferred to the peasants
absolutely, with out redemption payments. The land question must be
settled by local committees elected by universal, direct and equal
suffrage by secret ballot.

What Can the Three Chief Parties Achieve if Their
Whole Struggle is Successful?

The Black Hundreds, using every possible means of struggle, can
cause the people to be finally ruined and all Russia subjected to
the savagery of military courts and pogroms.

The Cadets, using only “peaceful” means of struggle, can
cause the pogrom-mongers’ government to buy off the big bourgeoisie
and the rich in the countryside at the cost of petty concessions,
while it will chase out the liberal chatter-boxes for insufficiently
servile
speeches about the beloved, blameless, inviolable, constitutional
monarch.

The Social-Democrats, using every possible means of struggle,
including an uprising, can, with the aid of the politically
conscious peasantry and urban poor, win complete freedom and all the
land for the peasants. And with freedom, and with the help of the
class-conscious
workers of all Europe, the Russian Social-Democrats can advance with
rapid strides to socialism.

Citizens! Vote at the Elections for Candidates of the Russian
Social-Democratic Labour Party!

Social-Democrats and the Trudovik Parties

Citizens!Anyone who wants to take an intelligent part in the elections to the
State Duma must first of all clearly understand the difference between the three
main parties. The Black Hundreds stand for pogroms and the violence of
the tsarist government. The Cadets stand for the interests of the
liberal landlords and capitalists. The Social-Democrats stand for the
interests of the working class and all the working and exploited people.

Anyonewho wants to uphold intelligently the interests of the working class and
all working people must know which party is really able most consistently and
resolutely to defend these interests.

Which Parties Claim to Defend the Interests of the
Working Class and all Working People?

The party of the working class, the Russian Social-Democratic
Labour Party, based on the standpoint of the
class struggle of the proletariat.

Trudovik parties, i.e., parties based on the standpoint of the small
proprietor:

The Socialist-Revolutionary Party.

The Trudovik (Popular Socialist) Party and the non-party Trudoviks.

Whose Interests do these Parties Actually Defend?

The interests of the proletarians, whose conditions of life deprive
them of all hope of becoming proprietors and cause them to strive
for completely changing the whole basis of the capitalist social
system.

The interests of the petty proprietors, who struggle against
capitalist oppression, but who, owing to the very conditions of
their life, strive to become proprietors, to strengthen their petty
economy and to enrich themselves by means of trade and hiring
labour.

How Steadfast are These Parties in the Great
World-Wide Struggle of Labour Against Capital?

The Social-Democrats cannot allow of any reconciliation of labour
and capital. They organise the wage-workers for a ruthless struggle
against capital, for the abolition of private ownership of the means
of production and for the building of socialist society.

The toilers’ parties dream of abolishing the rule of capital but,
owing to the conditions of life of the petty proprietor, they
inevitably waver between fighting jointly with the wage-workers
against capital and striving to reconcile workers and capitalists by
the conversion of all the working people into petty proprietors,
with equal division of land, or guaranteed credit, and so on.

What Can These Parties Achieve by Completely
Fulfilling Their Ultimate Aims?

The conquest of political power by the proletariat and the
conversion of capitalist into social, large-scale, socialist
production.

The equal distribution of land among petty proprietors and small
peasants, in which case there will inevitably be a struggle between
them again, giving rise to a division into rich and poor, workers
and capitalists.

What Kind of Freedom for the People are These Parties
Trying to Achieve in the Present Revolution?

Complete freedom and full power for the people, i. e., a democratic
republic, officials to be subject to election, the replacement of
the standing army by universal arming of the people.

Complete freedom and full power for the people, i. e., a democratic
republic, officials to be subject to election, the replacement of
the standing army by universal arming of the people.

A combination of democracy, i.e., full power of the people, with the
monarchy, i.e., with the power of the tsar, police and
officials. This is just as senseless a desire and just as
treacherous a policy as that of the liberal landlords, the Cadets.

What Is the Attitude of These Parties to the Peasants’
Demand For Land?

The Social-Democrats demand the transfer of all the landlords’ land
to the peasants with out any redemption payments.

The Socialist-Revolutionaries demand the transfer of all the
landlords’ land to the peasants without any redemption payments.

The Trudoviks demand the transfer of all the landlords’ land to the
peasants, but they allow redemption payments, which will ruin the
peasants, so that this is just as treacherous a policy as that of
the liberal landlords, the Cadets.

Citizens! Vote at the Elections for Candidates
of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party!

Notes

[1]
The leaflet “Whom to Elect to the State
Duma” was written prior to the elections to the Second Duma. In the
article “The Government’s Falsification of the Duma and the Tasks of the
Social Democrats”, Lenin called this leaflet a poster “about the
three chief parties” which took part in the Duma elections. The
leaflet was printed in Vyborg by the editorial hoard of Proletary as a
supplement to No. 5; it appeared in three editions (one in full and two
abridged) in St. Petersburg in 1906. In the abridged form it was also published
by the Ivanovo-Voznesensk, Kostroma and Kharkov committees of the R.S.D.L.P., by
the
Ob group
of the R.S.D.L.P., the Central Committee of the Social-Democrats of
the Lettish Territory and the Central Committee of the Latvian
Social-Democrats.